Numbers Game

Amy Keller | 9/1/2007

Real estate broker and appraiser Dennis Black says more than 1,000 North Port homes are vacant. [Photo: Jeffrey Camp]

Two years ago, amid the real estate frenzy, lots in North Port sold like hotcakes, and homes sprouted by the score. Located off I-75 just north of Port Charlotte, the city had encouraged growth with low impact fees and taxes. In 2005, it issued more than 4,000 new-home permits, with the price of a quarter-acre parcel rising from about $3,000 to around $35,000. Between 2000 and 2005, construction figures indicated that the population nearly doubled. “We had a lot of investors, and it just boomed,” says City Commissioner Fred Tower.

Today, residential construction in North Port is at a near-standstill, and experts are at odds over just how many people actually moved into the homes that were built.

A Census estimate released in July pegs North Port’s population at 50,000, and City Manager Steven Crowell says the planning department thinks the actual figure is closer to 52,000. But Dennis Black, a broker and appraiser who owns a real estate school in Port Charlotte, says city officials are confusing building stats with end-user demand. “The number of people actually moving into the community has been shrinking as a percentage” for years,” says Black.

Black estimates North Port’s population at 40,000 to 45,000. He knows this, he says, because he drove street by street for six weeks and surveyed which homes are occupied. Black says he began the study as an exercise to use in a real estate course he teaches. Along the way, he decided there was a thirst for “no-spin” information about the market.

North Port's Boom
Year	Population
2000	22,797
2001	25,234
2002	27,448
2003	31,352
2004	35,721
2005	40,100
2006	50,523
2007	52,000
Source: U.S. Census; Bureau of Economic and Business Research at the University of Florida; and North Port

By Black’s count, more than 1,000 homes in North Port are vacant. He says that city officials “claim in their budget that it’s 88% owner-occupied, but only 67% have filed homestead exemptions.”

Black is planning similar reports for Lehigh Acres near Fort Myers and Silver Spring Shores in Ocala, which he says face the “same problems” as North Port.

The best indicator of North Port’s true population may be the polls. If the population there really is booming, North Port voters may soon outnumber their wealthier neighbors in the north end of Sarasota County, giving them a bigger say in the election of county commissioners. Tower, for one, hopes that’s the case. “The county’s always tried to ignore us. That would give us more political clout.”

Tags: Politics & Law, Southwest, Government/Politics & Law, Housing/Construction